Things turned very ugly in Washington, DC yesterday evening,
with the police teargassing peaceful protesters to clear a path for Trump’s
absurd photo op of a bible held upside down in front of a church, and his fascist
threat to use the US military, in violation of US law, to “restore order.”
Against the evidence, I am going to offer an optimistic view
of these events. I think Trump has lost control
of the situation and is flailing wildly in an unsuccessful effort to make some
sort of impression favorable to himself on TV.
Three points:
First: the mayors and
governors are not falling in line. They
have figured out, from his handling of the pandemic, that Trump is a blowhard,
a paper tiger. He is surrounded by
genuinely evil people eager to use him for their fascist ends, but he is not
following their guidance, for all that he mouths their words.
Second: the media
coverage is powerfully negative, save for Fox News. Trump is a pathetic wannabee from Queens,
desperate for the approval he can never get from the big boys in Manhattan [and
yes, he really does operate at that ten year old schoolyard level.] Barr and Miller and the others only want
power; they do not care how they are portrayed on MSNBC. But Trump does care, and he has lost the
approval he cannot stop himself from seeking.
Third: If you listen
carefully to his fascist speeches, he is actually doing exactly what he has
done earlier with regard to the pandemic.
He lays it all on the governors.
Oh, there is bluster and threats and big talk, bizarrely expressed [what
on earth are ominous weapons?] But in the end, he is oddly and repeatedly
passive.
I think he is losing, he senses that he is losing, his
Republican toadies know he is losing, and if we keep our wits about us, we can
come out of this with the House, the Senate, the White House, and a legislative
agenda far more radical than Joe Biden dreamt in his worst Bernie nightmares,
an agenda he will as president have no choice but to endorse and pursue.
It is a long struggle ahead. Can the opposition rule by committee or do we need someone in charge?
ReplyDeleteI agree. He's losing it, and he's bleeding support. George Will--George Will!--has a column in today's Washington Post saying "Senate Republicans must be routed." He writes of their "Vichyite" support for Trump.
ReplyDeleteDavid,
ReplyDeleteIn a piece from a while back, Will described Pence as "oleaginous" which is the perfect description, much better than my phrase for Pence - "slimy bastard." "Vichyite" is another great characterization.
On the "Vichyite" theme, see this recently released piece in The Atlantic:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/07/trumps-collaborators/612250/
Trump holding a Bible upside-down? Oh, I missed that... What a beautiful(ly repulsive) photo that would be. It'd be worthy of placement in reference book entries for...something, I'm not quite sure what. Situational irony? Self-parody?
ReplyDeletehttps://www.businessinsider.com/dc-episcopal-bishop-outraged-after-trump-hosted-photo-op-church-2020-6
Ah, shoot. It IS upside-down from Trump's point of view, but not the photographer's, and clearly the purpose is to display it in such a pose before the audience. Not the potentially iconic image I thought it'd be... Still sacrilegious* to use the Bible as a prop in that way, as decent religious folk are pointing out.
But more importantly, I hope and (fingers crossed!) suspect your predictions are mostly correct.
*See also Matthew 6:5. "And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward."
https://twitter.com/bad_takes/status/1267594813710446593
ReplyDeleteI would say that the bible has been used as a prop since 325.
ReplyDeleteBTW, I heard that Rush Limbaugh (dying of brain cancer stage 17) had as his guests (which he himself said he never has unless they make him look good) "The Breakfast Club" - that hip hop group, starring Charlamagne Tha God! - who got Biden to put his foot in his mouth recently, and had a serious conversation where Limbaugh admitted that the white cop murdered Floyd. A kind of sea change.
But lest we get too optimistic, here's Malcom X warning us of the executioner's skill at ideology:
They put your mind right in a bag and take it wherever they
want.
Bob, you're got a fever. Go and lie down until it passes.
ReplyDeleteAs a "white," "professional" anarchist with some ties to the black community, I'm wondering if RPW could help people like me parse our role in all of this. I'm not really sure what to think about it all.
ReplyDeleteFirst of all, as an anarchist, I love a good riot. I have a hard time explaining why that is to liberals. It has to do with the classes taking back power and sticking it to the man and all that. "The voice of the unheard."
But these protests have notably liberal goals. They want punitive justice for murderous cops. While I can appreciate the rioting and outrage, none of this is reaching for any material goal of mine.
Because of that, it does seem like there are a lot of overwhelmingly white leftists who are trying to help BLM protest, but might be trying too hard to turn this into the revolution that it really isn't.
In addition to that, I've heard a handful of black activists from across the political spectrum getting really mad about white people trying to adopt their struggle.
Personally, I really am terrified of cops. They're racist and overwhelmingly murder black people, but they murder white people often enough too, and I think that should stop.
I've decided I will try to donate to relief funds. Maybe I can afford something to help protestors with bail. I will also echo MLK's arguments about Urban Riots to my friends and family. I'll explain that riots are a symptom of a problem, and trying to place blame upon rioters detracts from the actual issue at hand.
But I think I should try to stay out of the whole thing otherwise. My parents expressed that they wanted to go downtown to help out with the peaceful protestors, help clean up and stuff. I don't think we should go, because we're not black. We can sympathize with BLM, but we can't be a part of it, especially when we think that the protestors are doing something misguided one way or the other.
Sonic,
ReplyDeleteIn my experience people who are oppressed are almost always happy to see someone come and lend them a hand. If that turns into virtue signaling or moral grandstanding, then that might produce rejection, but that does not seem to be a possibility for someone as ethically scrupulous as you appear to be.
For sure, in any movement of the oppressed there will be some who are instantly suspicious of or just plain detest anyone who comes from a so-called privileged group even if that person clearly comes to them with the best intentions, but that is always a small, although at times, vocal minority.
To your point Jerry... I once flew with a Captain at a major airline who took out his bible during the preflight briefing and tossed it on the glare shield stating "we are going to run this flight by that book." When he was queried as to the page number for the Engine Fire Checklist...it got very quiet!
ReplyDeleteSonic said...
ReplyDelete"Because of that, it does seem like there are a lot of overwhelmingly white leftists who are trying to help BLM protest, but might be trying too hard to turn this into the revolution that it really isn't."
From my perspective in a small, university town, I worry that I'm seeing the same: that many young and/or pasty white people are turning these protests into a puritanical proxy fight to vent their own frustrations. If I could identify a genuine black community (in terms of non-whites, the area is heavily Hispanic), I would be more eager to get involved.
Anonymous at 8:16 PM, et al.
ReplyDelete“many young and/or pasty white people are turning these protests into a puritanical proxy fight to vent their own frustrations”
Are you for real, indulging in verbiage like that? Hate speech? Maybe not quite. But certainly derogatory speech seemingly rooted in dislike for a whole broad category of people. What did they do to arouse your contempt? Why are their “frustrations” trivialised? Are your frustrations somehow superior to theirs?
But lurking in several of the comments here is surely a more interesting question: who do social problems belong to? There seems to be a quite widespread notion that some particular social problems belong to some particular sets of people. but not to others But can that possibly be true? Doesn’t the very fact that they are widely perceived as social problems mean they are not the exclusive property of any particular set of people?
My own view, to be somewhat redundant, is that social problems belong to everyone in a society. This for at least two reasons (I have a limited imagination).
First, they impact everyone in a society one way or another, so we all have an interest in getting them solved. That means, of course, that solving them becomes a political matter. (I mean political in a broad sense, not in the narrow sense that can think about politics only in a shallow partisan fashion.) I suppose there are some, e.g., Trump, with immaculate perception who just know what the right solution is. But most of us aren’t so blessed. We have to engage with others to better understand both them and ourselves.
Relatedly, but coming at it from the opposite direction, for most of us, no matter which sets of people we imagine we belong to, should we experience something as especially problematical for one of the groups we belong to, we nonetheless have to deal with the fact that we’ll likely get nowhere in dealing with it unless we find allies. And once we do that, we have to see the concerns of these possible allies as valid for them. And more largely, we might even set about trying to fashion an understanding which connects our experiences and concerns with their experiences and concerns.
Etc. etc. I go on too long. But I’ll just throw in the following by way of conclusion:
https://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2020/06/racial-disparity-does-not-help-make-sense-of-patterns-of-police-violence.html
R McD,
ReplyDeleteI too am a person of pallor in this snow white town. Some of the local protesters are indeed ACABers who demand silence if their feelings are hurt. Real and specific incidents have earned my dislike, not imagined broad categories.
Maybe this is too local for the Professor's blog, but some of my interactions echo Sonic's concerns (not to lay words at Sonic's fingertips) and may be more widespread: that overwhelmingly white leftists (of which I would count myself one) are trying too hard, that they're not reaching for any specific material or legal goals, that they don't really understand blacks' struggles and are turning this into something else. That's why I would be more inclined to stand with a local black community if there were one.
This isn't Baltimore or Minneapolis with corpses to lay at the police department's door. If nothing else, I fear that without a central message or specific proposals, local protesters will produce more heat than light in the long run. Without a focus other than "all cops are bastards", they will only provoke a dismissive backlash.
And maybe I've been reading too much about virtue ethics, but yes, I am frustrated by people who may be playing the role of allies but just lashing out. Is there a central theme to their protests or are they venting their rage? Is this about George Floyd or their landlords (again something based on specific instances)?
—Anon 8:16 PM
A possible bit of evidence for this optimism: a site I regularly visit that is normally devoted about 75% to sports, 20% to other entertainment/pop culture (I usually skip this), and maybe 5% to politics, _The Ringer_ has devoted the last two days almost 100% to the protests, with the coverage being almost completely favorable to the protesters. As far as sports oriented sites go, it's a pretty "liberal" one. But, even such sites have to keep in mind that, in Michael Jordon's famous words, "Republicans buy sneakers, too". And, there are not a lot sports going on these days, so it's not like it's driving live sports from the headlines. And still, it's interesting, surprising, and encouraging to me to see a mostly sports oriented site devote itself to very largely positive coverage of the protests. I don't feel super confident about having my finger of the pulse of public opinion in the US these days, but it seems like an encouraging development to me.
ReplyDeleteDear anonymous (@2:40 AM),
ReplyDeleteThanks for your response. I'd like to make a couple of points in return.
First, do we really need bodies in the immediate vicinity to focus our minds in a realistic way?
Second, shouldn't we be thinking of protests as at least in part processes of discovery about the deeper nature of our immediate problems and about how to deal with them? I think this is true for all of us, but maybe it's especially true for young people. Maybe for some at the outset it isn't much more than virtue signalling. But I'd guess an awful lot of us who began by virtue signalling against Vietnam and against racism back in the sixties discovered things about ourselves and the societies we inhabited which have stuck with us ever since.
R McD,
ReplyDeleteThat's a really good point. You get involved in a good cause, often for not so noble motives, virtue signaling or to impress women or because it's the cool thing to do and as you get more deeply involved, your motives deepen and you learn, as you say, more about yourself and about society.
There's a Graham Greene novel, the Comedians, which I read many years ago and barely remember, but it's about a guy who constantly brags about his military heroism without ever having been in combat. However, when an emergency arises, the group of people whom he's with turn to him to protect them and he ends up sacrificing his life to protect them, that is, he becomes a real hero.